To A Friend As He Prepares To Make His Last Journey

Death is just another journey, my friend

I have met death, so many times, and each time it was just a step in this journey we call Life.

In this universe there are many dimensions, and beyond it, even more.

I have helped so many people in this life, and, when it was time to let them go, I again gave the gift of kindness to help them pass over to the other side.

A very good friend of mine is about to make that transition. I met Vijay many years ago during my spiritual journey to the UK and will always be grateful for his hospitality and friendship. He took my family in and we stayed at his home in Lyme Regis, Dorset, and did many healings and workshops for so many others there. We lost touch but reconnected recently. He is now in the final stages of his battle with ALS.

Vijay had a wonderful mind filled with curiosity about the esoteric but also, a deep love for the environment, for music, and, his many friends. And, he played the piano beautifully. He was a genius too, but I never had a problem understanding him :)

So this is an eulogy for my friend, because why not say nice things about our friends when they're around, and not, after they're gone?

But this also is a meditation on what has driven me since I was a child. What happens to us after death? And what is the journey like?

Can it be painful? Yes, for those who are afraid or die suddenly or had a life of regrets. Yet, even then, we can let go, we can forgive others and ourselves, we can move on. And there always will be friends, waiting to help us move to the other side.

A friend who was in the final stages of cancer saw me in this white cloud waving to her and told others it was a very peaceful moment for her; there was no more pain and she left her body later that day.

The thousands of people missing or dead in the great earthquake in Japan two days ago; I feel their pain very deeply, as I felt the pain of the hundreds of thousands killed in Tokyo in WWII when I lived there after the war. And as I wrote about in my blog after the earthquake in Haiti, the pain which was yet to come.

And yesterday my aunt through whom my healing journey began many years ago told me her sister had stage 4 cancer and my uncle passed away recently and his wife, my favourite aunt (because she's a Taurus) also has cancer, and her son is in hospital with diabetes and stress related complications.

Religion can, and does, give comfort to those who ask these questions about life after death. It also makes absurd distinctions about who can and cannot enter heaven. Heaven is a peaceful place and a step on that journey, and everybody gets there, sooner or later, and that depends on us, and not, the rules we create when we try to make sense of the world.

"In my father's house there are many mansions" might describe it one way. I do not believe that only those who follow a particular religion or belief can get there, and my role as a healer is to help all spirits make that transition.

There are several stages beyond when the spirit leaves the body. All of them are wonderful, though there is a place where we do face up to all we have done, and the price we have paid in our lack of understanding and peace.

But then, as I say to my friend Vijay, we go into that white light, and dissolve into the universal embrace of that peace.

PS: Vijay passed away recently. I was thinking of him this last while and sending him on with our prayers. We like to believe he has met, once again, his wife whom he loved very much. And that he knows how much he was loved by his many friends. RIP.